IRFN (April 3-7): Russian Ministry of Justice Approves Restrictive Religion Council

Apr 7, 2009

Feature: In an article in the journal Turkish Weekly, a former US Marine captain and two-tour veteran of the Iraq war discusses the problems he found in Venezuela concerning the treatment of Jews by the government and non-governmental actors. Read the full article here.

1.  Afghanistan: Controversial Law Condoning Marital Rape is Rescinded

KABUL – A controversial law condoning marital rape and reintroducing Taliban-era rules for Afghan women has been shelved after an international outcry, TimeOnline reported on April 7. The Afghan Foreign Ministry said that the law had not been enacted, while Justice Ministry officials said that its contents might be reconsidered. The legislation was put on hold pending a review. “The Justice Ministry is reviewing the law to make sure it is in line with the Afghan Government’s commitment to human rights and women rights conventions,” Sultan Ahmad Baheen, a spokesman for the ministry in Kabul, said. The British Government expressed alarm at the law, which applies to the 15 per cent of the Afghan population that is Shia Muslim, and President Obama called the law “abhorrent” at the NATO summit in Strasbourg last week. Reaction to the law among Shia women was largely supportive, Ruqiya Nayel, a Shia woman MP from Ghor province, said. “This law clearly violates our rights,” she told The Times. “Unfortunately most of the women I represent welcome this law because 98 per cent of women are uneducated and do not know their rights. A very few educated women are very sad about it.”

2.  United Arab Emirates: Fatwas To Be Brought Under Federal Jurisdiction

ABU DHABI – The country’s principal religious body has drafted a law that aims to counter what some senior clerics are calling “fatwa chaos” with the religious edicts coming from unqualified sources, The National reported on April 6.  The legislation proposed by the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments (AWQAF) awaiting cabinet approval, is intended to bring in a more “unified” approach across the emirates. “Unifying fatwa as well as controlling its sources and providing well informed reference for it is the main goal of this project,” Dr Mohammed al Kaabi, the AWQAF director-general, said in a statement. There has been confusion on which religious rules actually apply, and in some cases there has been the promulgation of more radical views that ran contrary to Sharia principles such as tolerance. The main goal is to get rid of the chaotic fatwa and organize all its types either in mosques, newspapers, magazines, audio-visual media or others.

Among the proposals is the establishment of a high committee consisting of religious scholars drawn from all seven emirates, whose task will be to set federal fatwa policies. According to the AWQAF, they will be highly qualified people, experienced in both Sharia and the main schools of Islamic jurisprudence, particularly the official Maliki school.

The high committee would also decide on a single, federal position on major religious issues.

3.  Mexico: Death Saint Shrines Demolished by Government

MEXICO CITY – About 200 worshipers marched on April 5 to protest the government's destruction of "Death Saint" shrines, saying Mexico's fight against drug cartels has veered into religious persecution, the AP reported on April 5. "We are believers, not criminals!" the protesters chanted as they marched from a gritty Mexico City neighborhood to the Metropolitan Cathedral downtown. The Death Saint is popular with drug traffickers, and soldiers often find shrines to the saint during raids on cartel safe houses. Mexican law enforcement won't say that it is targeting the "Santa Muerte." But last month, army troops accompanied workers who used back hoes to topple and crush more 30 shrines on a roadway in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas. The sect's archbishop, David Romo, denounced the destruction as religious persecution and demanded a meeting with President Felipe Calderon. Roberto Sanchez, a 28-year-old carpenter, said he became a believer after praying to the Death Saint for the recovery of a sick nephew. He carried a sign reading "I believe in you Santa Muerte and I am not a narco." "If we are not doing anything to them, they shouldn't be doing this," he said of the shrines' destruction.

4.  Russia: Ministry of Justice Approves Restrictive Religious Council

MOSCOW – Patriarch Kirill’s support for what he calls “the traditional religions of Russia” – Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism – against all others has been institutionalized at the Russian justice ministry with the selection of a specialist notorious for his hostility toward Roman Catholics, Protestant Evangelicals, and other groups, to head a new religious council, the Georgian Daily reported on April 4. On April 3, the justice ministry’s experts council charged with providing guidance on religious questions to Russian courts and other bodies met for the first time in Moscow and in “a unanimous decision” chose Aleksandr Dvorkin, who describes himself as a specialist on “sectology,” as council head. The newly constituted council includes representatives of Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, as well as civil specialists on relations between church and state, new religious movements and “pseudo-religious criminal and extremist structures.” The inclusion of representatives from these four faiths but from no others is a victory for Kirill, who has been pushing the concept of “traditional religions” of Russia since the late 1990s, but the installation of Dvorkin is even more disturbing given his attacks on other religions and his extremely restrictive view on just what religious organizations should be permitted in Russia.

5.  Pakistan: Flogging Video Shakes Peace Accord

ISLAMABAD – Pakistani authorities ordered inquiries Friday into a video showing the public flogging of a screaming woman in a northwestern valley where officials have yielded to Taliban demands for Islamic law, the AP reported on April 3. A militant spokesman defended the punishment, fueling a furor that cast more doubt on a peace deal in the Swat valley that U.S. officials fear has created another haven for allies of al-Qaeda. Officials vowed to introduce impose Islamic law, or Shariah, in Swat in February to halt 18 months of terror and bloody fighting between militants and security forces that killed hundreds of people. Shariah has not yet formally been introduced and provincial officials say that, in any case, they would not condone such whippings or the harsh brand of Islamic law practiced under Afghanistan's former Taliban rule. But the video provided a reminder of how hardliners in control of much of valley interpret Islamic law. The embattled government of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province struck the deal with a hardline cleric who helped secure a cease-fire. However, President Asif Ali Zardari's office says he won't sign the bill introducing Islamic law there unless he is satisfied that peace has been restored — a prospect that seemed to recede on April 3 after a sharp outcry by rights groups.